2022 New Treatment Accelerator Grant - Dr Alex Staudacher

Project Summary

Pancreatic cancer is an extremely aggressive and treatment-resistant disease with dire prospects for patients: a rising incidence rate in Australia and a stubbornly low 5-year survival (≈12%). This is because most pancreatic cancers are detected at a late stage, meaning that potentially curative surgery is not feasible. Although chemotherapy is used to treat the disease, it has associated toxicities and the response rates remain poor due to the emergence of chemo-resistant cancer cells. Hence, there is a need for novel targeted therapeutic approaches to better treat chemotherapy-resistant pancreatic cancer. Here, the Project Team will employ their antibody, APOMAB, which binds specifically to dead cancer cells killed by anti-cancer treatments like chemotherapy or radiation. These dead cancer cells are greatest in number after the first round of chemotherapy which is a standard treatment for pancreatic cancer. The team will turn APOMAB into a radioactive missile, where it can seek out and bind to the chemotherapy-induced dead cancer cells and irradiate the surrounding viable, chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells. The antibody can be tuned with different types of radiation, especially with a type of radiation strong enough to eradicate any chemo-resistant cancer cells, meaning this treatment may help to overcome chemo-resistance in pancreatic cancer.